Organic Painting

Painting with Acacia catechu tree extract

The above photo is the tree known as Acacia catechu. The heartwood, bark, and wood extract (called catechu) is red in color are used in traditional medicine.

A concentrated aqueous extract, known as khayer gum or cutch is obtained by boiling the cutch in water and evaporating the resulting brew. This cutch extract is used as a food additive, astringent, tannin, and dye.

As soon as the idea of an organic painting striked me, I was curious to try my first cutch painting and I did not have the patience to wait and buy it online. So I got a small trial pack from a nearby paan shop friend of mine. It was more of a concentrated liquid with deep brown shade.

Since it seemed to be a little watery, I chose the water colour paper for my art. I immediately stroked an outline of Ganesh.

I used round shaped brush (size 2) for the outline. Soon the ouline came into shape. Drying time is quite high compared to usual water color drying time. Once dried, one more coat of cutch can be applied to increase the depth of the outline.

Prefer a broad round brush (size 4,6) for coloring the Ganesh inside the outline. Water and cutch have to be diligently used so as to not to concentrate the color at one place. Color of the cutch blended as perfect as the commercial water colors. Gradually I was able to give the desired depth to the Ganesh painting. The composition of colors from cutch seemed more receptive to water color paper and retained the color fantastically.

The high level of tannins present in the cutch made a special magic on water color paper in sticking the natural pigments to the paper. Finally I had an exemplary art work made from organic source, the cutch and we have the magical organic Ganesh!